the tindog coffeehouse

My weekly thoughts about last night’s Lost:

• Not as much mythology this episode, but we did get some. Seems my theory that Widmore and Smokey are on the same team may not be right. Apparently the only way Smokey can free himself of the island is to get the remaining candidates (Jack, Hurley, Sun, and Sawyer) off of it. But Widmore is trying to keep them on the island in order to keep Smokey contained. (At least if you take what Smokey and Widmore say at face value.)
• Interesting that all the candidates left the island previously. Except for one: Sawyer. I guess Sawyer’s decision to jump out of the helicopter was pretty critical. Of course, at that point Jacob was still alive, so maybe that wouldn’t have mattered as long as they all returned before Jacob’s death.
• Sawyer asks Smokey why he has to take a boat to Hydra island. Why not just turn into a pillar of smoke and fly over to it. Smokey replies that if he could do that, he would’ve already left by now. That raises a lot of questions about what exactly keeps Smokey imprisoned there. Again, it must have something to do with the fact that either Jacob or his successors are on the island. I mean, theoretically you could just line the perimeter of the island with those fancy pylon things and keep him penned in (as long as someone kept the power on). So why isn’t Widmore doing that?

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Ahoy! This here be ye olde ruminations of the Lost of yore. Shiver me timbers!

(You mean this isn’t Talk Like A Pirate Day? Darn. Oh well. On with the blog then…)

• I like how in addition to Richard’s backstory, we got a little bit more of Ilana’s. It was also confirmed that Sun is, in fact, the Kwon Jacob’s list referred to. (Sorry, Jin, you were this close. Maybe next time, buddy.)
• We also found out how the Taweret statue became the less-impressive-but-way-creepier four-toed statue and how the Black Rock ended up in the middle of the jungle. Personally, I thought that was a little hokey and pretty unbelievable, but this is a show about time travel, so I guess I can suspend my disbelief a little longer.
• The Black Rock came to the island in 1837. Too bad it wasn’t 1842, then we could’ve gotten another iteration of the numbers. Although if you add 3 and 7, you get 10, and then if you take the 0 from the 10 and put it between the 1 and the 8, you get 108. Whoa, I just blew your mind, didn’t I?

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Kansas, you’re dead to me.

After picking you to win the National Championship, what did you do? You went out and lost to Northern Iowa, a school that I’m pretty sure is fictional since no one has ever heard of it.

Also gone is No. 2 Villanova, who lost to tenth-seeded St. Mary’s. That’s also pretty embarrassing, but at least no one expected Nova to win the South region. Besides, with two small Catholic schools playing each other, it’s just clear that God liked St. Mary’s better. (Although the word on the street is that the Pope had Nova by 10.)

I’m still sticking with K-State to make it to the Final Four, and my other 2 picks, Kentucky and Duke, are still safe. As for the Midwest, it’s definitely living up to its nickname, “The Group of Death”. I would say at this point that Ohio State looks like it has the best shot at winning the region, but you never know. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Issaquah School of Interior Design won the whole thing!

Previously:
March Madness: First-round results
March Madness 2010: My picks

It’s only the end of first round of the NCAA tournament, and my bracket is already pretty bruised. Out of the 32 first-round games, I missed 9, giving me a percentage of 72%. Ouch.

Biggest upset: Murray State’s win over Vanderbilt, who I’d picked to make it to the Final Four. Seriously, did anyone in America pick No. 13 Murray State to pick off No. 4 Vandy? No, of course not! Not even the mother of the Murray State coach. Other big upsets: No. 14 Ohio over No. 3 Georgetown, No. 12 Cornell over No. 5 Temple, and No. 11 Old Dominion over No. 6 Notre Dame.

Upsets I actually got right: No. 11 Washington beating No. 6 Marquette and No. 9 Northern Iowa beating No. 8 UNLV.

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Dallas Morning News columnist Jacuielynn Floyd framed the Texas State Board of Education’s incessant tussling over social studies standards perfectly:

But it glaringly underscores that this entire exercise, which I once naively believed to be part of an effort to produce intelligent, intellectually responsible citizens, is not about academics at all.

No, there’s nothing to see here but the same old blowhard talking points that currently pass for political discourse.

Religious conservatives who dominate the board don’t even bother trying to pretend otherwise. They’ve made it clear that they believe their mission is to even the score with what they see as snotty leftist academics who have poisoned public education.

It’s not about kids grasping history and learning to draw independent conclusions – it’s about who gets to run the indoctrination camp. …

Paradoxically, the saddest thing about all this is also the only consolation I can find.

It’s this: Ideological fist-pumping over such meddlesome trivia as substituting “free enterprise” for “capitalism” or “constitutional republic” for “democracy” won’t make much difference to teenagers who graduate without being able to punctuate, add simple fractions or find Panama on a map.

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Lots to talk about from last night’s Lost, so let’s get to it:

• The title of the episode was “Recon”. As the producers pointed out, that could mean “reconnaissance”, but it could also mean “re-con”, or “to con again”.
• Sawyer is getting played by Widmore and Smokey. Widmore doesn’t want to kill Smokey, they’re on the same side.
• Smokey says he just wants to leave the island. Just like a criminal wants to escape prison or a supervillain wants to escape Arkham Asylum. Smokey’s been trapped on the island, but once the loophole is found and Jacob is defeated, he’ll be free to unleash his smoke monster power on the rest of the world. Widmore knows this, and like any evil capitalist pig, he wants to use it to his advantage to take over the world. Widmore doesn’t want to bring people to the island like it’s Jurassic Park, he wants to get Smokey off of it.

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